free books to fight fascism

one thing everyone can do

Hello friends! This is Ursula Fan Club, where I share what I’m writing, reading, and seeing in the world as I write the first draft of my book. If you’re interested in speculative fiction, the climate, ancestral stuff, textiles, living in a human body, and balancing a creative practice with whatever this is *waves wildly around*, you’ll probably like it here.

Is the title of this post clickbait? I hope so. Because there is one thing I want every person who reads this post to do: give away a book to fight fascism.

Take a look at the best seller list of Bookshop.org right now. Top of the list is On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, and not far behind is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, 1984 by George Orwell, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley, and Let This Radicalize You by Miriame Kaba. On any given day, the list might also have one or two books by Robin Wall Kimmerer and I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman.

This is a reading list of books that explore, interrogate, explain, and future-proof us on fighting an autocratic or fascist state. Many of these books were published decades ago and are classics for a reason. They’re the companions so many of us are turning to as the democracy we grew up in, and maybe took for granted, rapidly crumbles.

You all read the news and I don’t need to rehash the horror of this moment here. But I live in Baltimore and it is impossible to not know someone whose work has been affected by the cruel, illegal annihilation of government agencies, Congressionally approved appropriations, and slashing of DEI programs. A friend whose agricultural work in central Africa that was funded by USAID is out of a job. Another friend who works as a contractor for NASA has been told that posters featuring female astronauts and women in STEM are no longer permitted in the office and celebrations of non-Christian holidays are canceled. My first salaried job out of college was as a lobbyist for NPR, where I stomped around Capitol Hill visiting Senate and House offices and tried to convince Republican staffers that funding public radio stations was a good idea. That was fifteen years ago; I can’t imagine that job still exists, or will exist a month from now. Will NPR and PBS even continue to exist? I don’t know.

But something sparked for me when I saw the best seller list for Bookshop.org—I can help feed this fire. Because if there’s anything fascists hate, it’s books.

So here’s your homework! Pick up an extra copy of that book you’re buying for yourself, and give it away. Or hell, pick up five copies, ten copies, twenty copies. Raid your used or new bookstore, place a huge order on Bookshop.org or Thriftbooks.com, and distribute books in Little Free Libraries around your neighborhood. No Little Free Library near you? Buy and install one. It’s fun! Or just leave free books at a bus stop, propped up against a wall outside the Safeway, or other public and unexpected places.

Decorating a Little Free Library for my parents’ suburban neighborhood a couple of years ago, because they didn’t have one nearby. Stencils! Flowers! Bees!

If you need some ideas, check out banned book lists and Bookshop.org’s best seller list. If you can afford to buy multiple copies of popular books like On Tyranny, Parable, 1984 or Handmaid, get those and distribute them freely. Or select lesser known and older works that are inexpensive to bulk order on Thriftbooks.com. Don’t forget books for kids and young readers—they need books just as much as adults do.

Here are the books I’ve ordered to distribute in my neighborhood and beyond:

• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (get the book that inspired 1984; called “the best single work of science fiction yet written” by Ursula K. Le Guin and the newest edition includes a forward by Margaret Atwood)

• Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (a tour de force from a writer who resisted the Nazis, based on a true story of an everyday German couple who also resisted Nazi rule, and the best book about Nazi resistance I’ve ever read)

• Feed the Resistance: Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved by one of my favorite food writers, Julia Turshen!

• On Revolution by Hannah Arendt (a book about, well, revolution by the preeminent thinker and writer of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil and The Origins of Totalitarianism)

• And for the young readers, The Giver by Lois Lowry, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo, The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, and Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin

Are you a librarian or a book seller? What books can your readers not get enough of right now? I’d love to know! Please leave a comment and let’s fill up this post with as many anti-fascist book recommendations as we can.

I’ll be back soon with more about what I’m reading and writing. Take care of yourself and each other.